"Good but definitely not perfect and not a GOTY contender"

I got Bioshock because so many people were saying it's a GOTY contender, some were even saying it's the best game ever. After having played through it I do not understand how anyone could say it's a GOTY contender let alone best ever.

Gameplay: 7/10

I like FPS games but I found the gameplay in Bioshock to be quite boring. There's really no variety of enemies in the game, you fight Splicers, which are mutated people that look like zombies, and you fight rudimentary robots half of which cannot even move and the ones that move can only fly and they are incredibly annoying, so annoying you'd be tempted to turn off the volume. You can actually hack these robots so that they help you, but they're so annoying you wouldn't want to carry them around anyways. That's it, there are no other types of enemies to fight.

In some parts of the game you must fetch ingredients to build special weapons. First of all if I wanted to fetch items I'd play an RPG, not an FPS. Secondly these special weapons can only be used once, so to me it was quite a disappointment having to spend hours fetching ingredients just to use a weapon for about 5 seconds.

In this game you can magically carry all weapons that you pick up, which hurts the realism. The weapons are the ordinary weapons you can use in FPS games, such as a pistol, shotgun, grenade launcher, crossbow, etc. Nothing revolutionary in this department.

Your character has the ability to use magical weapons such as Electric Bolt, Incinerate, Winter Blast, Telekinesis, etc. Choose Electric Bolt and you can be a mini Rayden, choose Incinerate and you can be a mini Scorpion, or choose Winter Blast and you can be a mini Sub-Zero. Unfortunately when I say mini I really mean mini because these powers feel nowhere near as fun as those character's abilities. Electric Bolt and Winter Blast barely do any damage, and Incinerate only has one animation. Boring.

I was also disappointed that all the Little Sisters look exactly the same, as does their death animations. Once you harvest one you will know how all the other harvests will look like. Boring.

Story: 5/10

I finished the game and I have no idea why Andrew Ryan decided to build the underwater city Rapture. Can you imagine someone building an underwater city today? Who would actually want to live underwater? Unfortunately the game fails to answer any of these questions, the city is there because it's there and the citizens are there because they are there.

The city is supposedly atheist, yet there are several splicers in the game that definitely are religious.

There are many plot twists in this game but they got to be so ridiculous I quickly stopped caring about the story. There's an important boss in this game that actually lets you kill him, and I still have no idea why he did that. You go through a big portion of the game thinking this guy is a huge badass, and when you actually meet him he lets you kill him? That was a big letdown for me.

The ending was one of the biggest dissapointments I've ever had in a videogame. I got the harvesting ending, which only rewarded me with a 20 second video that only left me puzzled. However I hear that the other two endings are just as bad.

Graphics: 8/10

The graphics looked wonderful on my LCD HDTV. If you're ever worried about the graphics potential of the Xbox 360, you only need to play this game for your fears to disappear.

So why did I give it only 8 out of 10 for graphics? Well the animations could be better and the gore was not nearly as well done as I have seen in other games such as Gears of War.

I could barely remember the blood in Bioshock despite having completed it last night, whereas I can still fondly remember the blood in Gears of War.

Sound: 9/10

Bioshock has a decent soundtrack for an FPS. Not as good as Halo 3's, but good nonetheless. I'm a big fan of classical piano music, so if you're one as well there will be certain parts in this game that you will be thrilled with.

Voice acting in Bioshock is generally good, some of the voice actors are better than others. Some characters have distinct accents, you'll either love it or hate it.

Presentation: 9/10

The intro up to the part where you first get out of the elevator is one of the best intros I've ever witnessed in a videogame.

Length: 5/10

Extremely short, you should be able to finish this game in about 10 hours in your first playthrough.

Replayability: 1/10

I have no intentions of replaying this game anytime soon. After my brother finishes the game we might decide to sell it. There's no multiplayer, and I don't really feel like fetching items and fighting the same Splicers all over again.

Overall: 7/10

If I could travel back in time I would rent this game instead of buying it. It is way too short and has no replayability. Its worth a rental so you could see the graphics.